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Not Worried About a Little Baby Fat

New Parents

Jessica Grose offers monthly bulletins on how becoming a parent (her daughter was born in December 2012) is changing her life.

I was showing my favorite photograph of the baby to an acquaintance. She commented on the girl’s sweet thighs sticking out of her flowered onesie and her kissable cheeks, and I said, with maternal pride, “She’s such a chubby bunny.” The other woman seemed mildly horrified that I would call my daughter chubby, even in an admiring way. “Don’t worry,” she said. “She’ll grow out of it.”

I’m not worried about my daughter’s “growing out” of anything. I know my acquaintance didn’t mean it as an insult. She probably assumed that I was concerned about my daughter’s size because I used the word chubby, and fat phobia is our default cultural setting. But she’s a hearty, developing baby who is and always will be fed healthfully and appropriately by her dad and me. She was big at birth — 9 pounds 2 ounces, and 22 inches long — and so continues on that robust trajectory.

But even by writing out her stats, I feel as if I’m already defending her against charges of fatness (she’s big but proportional!), and playing into the dysfunctional dialogue about body size. I thought I had at least a few years before I had to mull this over, but apparently the body obsession starts immediately upon exiting the womb. And that’s what I’m really worried about: raising a daughter in a culture that’s completely demented when it comes to weight. Which is not to say that boys are immune to this. When I tweeted something along these lines, at least one mom of a big baby boy said she got similar concerned comments. Still, the burden of physical perfection continues to fall unevenly on women.

Worse, I’m unsure about how to be a good role model for her. I’ve never had a weight problem, and yet I have spent an embarrassing amount of time dissecting myself in the mirror and eating limp grilled-chicken salads, which is somehow the one universally endorsed “appropriate” meal for young women, the one that gets repeated by every starlet on a diet featured in Us Weekly. I will never get that time back, or be able to replace that self-loathing with self-love, or those pallid slabs of poultry with something more delicious. I want to save my daughter from that phenomenal, tedious waste of mental energy, that endless denial of pleasure. But it feels even more difficult to do this than when I was a child in the ’80s. Back then, there were only those Us progenitors blaring new weight-loss methods from their covers.

Now, there seem to be ever more avenues for girls to obsess about their size. Some studies have shown that when people see pictures of themselves on Facebook, they can become more body conscious. Every possible social network has some demented pro-anorexia faction — which is to say, a group of mostly young women who trade unhealthy weight-loss tips and tricks and post photos of skeletal models as “thinspiration.” And that’s only the truly disturbed. Spend more than five minutes on Pinterest, and you can fall down any number of weight-related Web rabbit holes: fitness tips, photos of slender yoginis stretching languidly, recipes for paleo dieters and macrobiotic Gwyneth Paltrow wannabes.

I can’t keep my girl locked in a room, free from the insidious influence of juice cleanses and Tracy Anderson. In a conversation about women and food issues, the body image expert and activist Kate Harding had this advice about raising a daughter who is happy with herself: “1) Read Ellyn Satter. 2) Cross fingers.” Ms. Satter, a nutritionist and social worker, is the author of “Your Child’s Weight: Helping Without Harming,” and she preaches a common sense, loving attitude toward children and eating. “Children who eat and grow at the extremes make their parents so nervous that they often interfere,” she writes. “It backfires. In our weight-obsessed culture, parents may try to restrict a robust child with a hearty appetite because they assume that enjoying food and eating a lot means she will get fat. It doesn’t, and it doesn’t work.”

Ms. Satter tells parents it is their children’s job to say how much food they need. It is our job to provide a healthy variety of foods, family mealtimes and a relaxed attitude. I can do all that. I can also start responding to well-meaning peers like the woman who told me that my daughter would “grow out of it.” At the time, I demurred and changed the subject, because I was taken aback. But if I had it to do over again, I’d say, “She’ll grow however she’s supposed to.”

About

We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more